Do Americans really have high school football parties and prom nights as often as shown in movies?
November 18, 2025
I've watched a ton of American movies that always mention these phenomena – are they actually real?
48 comments
There’s generally 2-3 formal dances a year, one of them is prom.
Yep. Prom-posals (extravagant ways of asking “Will you go to prom/homecoming with me”) have taken over, too
Do you mean like the Super Bowl? Then yes, that is quite common. Prom is held once a year by the majority of high schools in America. It is from Britain though, they just stopped doing it.
HS football is usually a 10-12 game regular season in the fall, so 5-6 home games, typically on Friday nights.
Potential for a couple more games if you make the playoffs.
My school was too small to have a football team.
We did have prom though.
Football is one season. So that happens in the fall. Prom is once a year
Yep
There is a huge difference between “is this actually real?” (Yes) and “does this happen as often as shown in movies?” (No).
In a movie, the narrative will advance to interesting stuff – you don’t often see people going to the bathroom or watching a movie inside your movie.
Prom only happens once a year, homecoming (a week of football parties) only happens once a year, but the movies always take time to show these events.
By “football parties”, do you mean pep rallies like in Grease?
Yes we really do prom and have parties.
High school football parties is more of a rural area thing. That’s just because there is nothing else to do there except go cow tipping or snipe hunting.
What is a high school football party?
Prom is usually once a year. There is often 1 or 2 other dances throughout the year, but there’s only 1 prom.
Yes. This is a thing. Though the scale at which they are shown in movies is often overblown.
Yes we have big parties and proms. Mine was similar to many movies. Limo, NYC, drunken kid stuff. Fun old days.
Yes but exaggerated
Prom is once per year. Football parties happen more often with big fans, but most people only have one per year for the Super Bowl, if they are into sports at all.
Prom is once per school year, but there are other dances like homecoming and sometimes winter formal. Football games happen every weekend for the most part during the football season, never heard of football parties though.
There are generally two proms you go to in high school, junior prom and senior prom
Then there is homecoming, which is a high school thing, once every year, and all four years are involved. There will be a home coming king and a home coming queen. Usually just one, but some schools do a king and a queen for each year.
Homecoming can be a very big thing, especially in rural areas that take football seriously. Some towns have huge rivalry and will really go to great lengths over their teams. Football and basketball.
The beavers vs duck, which is college, was an example of this (i understand they are not longer in the same group any more but I am not a sports person so 😉)
So yes. Every year.
There is a parade for home coming too.
Prom kids will rent limos, and some hotel rooms for the night.
Massachusetts:
From what I read here crazy parties aren’t the norm anymore. When I was in high school in the 1980s, every weekend there were crazy parties with a couple hundred kids, literally (attempting) to swing from chandeliers, 7 rooms of parties, people hooking up in bedrooms, and usually eventually broken up by cops and people run off into the night.
Toga parties, SO much alcohol, drinking games, throwing out windows, people passed out all over. It was mayhem and bad decisions.
After prom we gathered gathered at parents/grandparents little lake cabins, off season.
As a genx , when I was a kid, house parties actually happened quite often, and not just for the things that you mentioned.
I graduated in 2000 so I can’t say what’s going on NOW, but ya when I was in school we very frequently had parties after football games. I was in the marching band so we were all together anyway. We would very frequently go to someone’s house afterwards as a big group. Often with players and cheerleaders too…the cliques like you saw on TV didn’t really exist.
Yes high school football exists and can be a big deal among the student body. In some locations (often smaller towns) the wider community takes an interest in the football team and attends the games in addition to students at the school.
The prom happens once a year, and there will often be a few other similar dances throughout the year that are a bit less fancy. At my high school the prom was only open to students in the oldest two years (plus their dates) while the other dances were open to all students. The specifics probably vary a bit throughout the country.
Yeah, had parties every home game I played football. And there was a homecoming dance and prom every year. So yes it’s real just not as often as seen in the movies
Fuck yeah, prom every Friday and Saturday night. Most weeknights too in summer.
My daughter just graduated from High School, I didn’t hear her mention a football party. There was a Homecoming Dance which is generally a big deal at a school, Prom, and a Winter Formal. With Prom and Homecoming she said that very few students actually stayed more than an hour and most went off to after-parties, and after-after parties.
Yes. Football season is fall. There is a homecoming parade before the game. A king and Queen are nominated. Then after the game is usually a homecoming dance (sometimes the night before or a week apart). High schools generally host one or two pep rallies during the school day.
At end of school year there is a junior and senior prom. They are usually at wedding type venues.
I lived in a mid sized Midwest town with 2 high schools. We had a football party at one of the players houses after EVERY game. Parents would bring TONS of food and the players and their girlfriends would just hang out. Usually outside around a big bonfire. Parents were always present so it wasn’t an alcohol fueled crazy thing.
We had two dances a year. Homecoming and prom.
football parties every week. it’s so bad that kids leave the games early to get over there and pre-drink.
i mean prom parties, yeah, but that’s only once a year.
“Homecoming” is the big one for football. That is usually a week, weekend, and/or day where a school hosts activities for past graduates/attendees. It’s a big reunion, typically. Or at least, that’s the stated goal. For some it really is, for some it’s just a big weekend. A football game is usually part of this unless the school doesn’t have a football team.
Football is almost exclusively an autumn/fall sport, at least for schools; and Homecoming is usually in October. This is usually accompanied by a part or dance at the school (or hosted by the school) as well as private events that students or families may organize. The dance may happen at a rented place like a hotel, ballroom, large church, etc. but it would still be organized by the school or people associated with the school like the parent-teacher association or the social-events student committee, or some other group/committee related to student life / events. These are not something the school will hire a random “party company” to organize, at least not in most places.
There are a few others, in the spring there is usually a more formal event. For most schools it is for just the oldest students, often only Seniors (sometimes with Juniors / grade 11 as well) with rules about how a senior might invite a younger student as their date, but those rules are often somewhat strict. A senior couldn’t invite the entire Freshman class or something. Prom is usually a *really* big deal for most students at most schools, though it’s not universal. My school was small enough that the spring formal was open to all students, with a more “party” type event just for seniors that happened separately.
I recall there being a basketball game for the mid-winter dance, but that was not a big event, not even a normal event. Just a random weekend for students to have fun – basketball team played a normally scheduled game Friday afternoon and school dance either afterward or on Saturday. etc.
Other parties or semi-formal events depend on the school and may or may not be related to milestones or sports that happen during the school year. To my mind those are the only two “universal” events that all schools would either host, or would host an equivalent. Some schools may do two or three per term, some schools only one or two all year, but even the busiest “party” school is not hosting anything like monthly school-wide parties.
Sometimes a sports team, the marching band, or a student club will host a party for their participants but these are separate from the school-wide parties. If the football team has a season-end party in December, that is separate from Homecoming in October and would be just for the football team and their dates.
These (school parties/formals) are also separate from school-wide community events. As an example of a community event, my school had a day where you get to school, go to the gymnasium, and we were broken off into groups. Then we went with our groups in cars or busses and did yardwork around the neighborhood (eg. clearing fallen branches, collecting trash, etc).
Yes. Prom is once a year in the spring. Football is all through the fall.
I’ve never been quite sure if high schoolers are nowhere near as unsupervised, promiscuous, and party-obsessed as they are on TV, or if I was just a loser. But my experience was definitely not remotely, like, *at all*, how high school is portrayed on almost any TV show. Gilmore Girls was pretty accurate, I guess.
Prom is a thing and kids often party before and after, but it’s just once a year and I think it’s only for seniors and their dates (honestly, I didn’t go, it felt absurd to me to actually *elect* to spend extra time in the high school social scene).
Homecoming is the first dance of the year and usually after the first football game. Prom is the last dance of the year and attended by people about to graduate (and possibly one of the younger students if they’re a guest)
Big football parties are more of a regional thing, more common in the South than the North and more common in Rural areas than Urban areas.
There are usually at least two dances a year at any high school, Homecoming in the Fall which is usually for all grades and is ‘dressy’ rather than ‘formal’ usually and Prom in the Spring or early Summer (right at the end of the school year) which is officially for Seniors and sometimes Juniors (12th and 11th grades, and some bigger schools have separate Junior and Senior prom) and is formal. Prom and Homecoming are pretty much universal.
High school football is a huge saturday night event at most schools around the US with cheerleaders and sometimes hundreds of people attending.
Prom night and other school dances (usually 3 a year) are pretty much as you see them in movies. Kids getting dressed up, dancing, sometimes hiring limos or taking dad’s expensive car out, upperclassmen usually have sleepover parties sometimes involving drinking alcohol.
Yes. High school football games on Friday night usually. You have big cries. Some small towns, adults come to see the game even if they dont have kids. It’s a big social event. Other sports font carry the crowds.
Senior prom is a big night for seniors near the end of their graduating year. These would be within 3 weeks or so from graduation.
When I was a kid before social media/ cell phones– fir nsny thus might hsve been the last social event you’d ever see your classmates for the rest of your life.
Before Facebook came around, I only saw ( excluding classmates who lived a few house from my home). I saw regularly 3 people from my graduating class. 2 of them i saw at
college and one class mate married a friend of mine. I saw a few others at random parties or events in that. Ig I had cell phones I probably would have kept in touch with others. Another friend married another classmate ( 2nd for both..both already had kids)
Absolutely yes. I grew up in the big city (Los Angeles) and football and dances were life.
Prom is an annual event.
My school was trash at football, but the games would have a vendor selling cheap pizza, and they were an excuse to hang out with your friends and maybe drink some booze that one of your friends stole from their parents. Sometimes a student band would play before the game and we’d dance.
High school football parities usually only happen after football games, which is 5-6 times during football season (August-November). Homecoming parties are usually after homecoming, which is in October or November.
Prom nights usually happen in April or May. My school had separate junior and senior proms.
So really that’s 8-9 nights out of nine months. So no, not that often
Proms happen every school year, and there are usually Homecoming parties, church dances, and in my hometown Sweet 16 parties and quinceneras were a big deal.
In my 70’s high school we had the fall dance the weekend of the Homecoming football game, with a rock band inside and lots of kids outside smoking weed and drinking, very informal. They played a bunch of fast rocking songs, then a slow one for slow dances, with plenty of pretty girls waiting for someone to ask them to dance, so that was pretty good. It gave you an idea where your chances were. We had a few of those dances every year at school, plus prom in the spring, but then the local Boys & Girls Club staying having dances every Friday night at their facility, which was pretty great.
where i’m from (Long Island, NY), there is only 1 dance per year, but it’s a different kind depending on age. younger kids might have a valentines day dance, a semi-formal dance, or a winter formal type event, usually around halfway through the school yeaf. high schoolers may have a junior prom for younger students, but not all schools do that. then there’s the almighty senior prom for the graduating seniors- basically the only universal event – which is usually reserved for the end of the school year.
idk about football parties. i never attended a single football game growing up and don’t intend to as an adult unless some future child of mine decides they love football (God help me XD). i genuinely detest the sport as a whole and the culture around it. it was not a necessary part of social life in my region and i don’t feel as though i missed out on anything.
It makes me so sad that so many people think house parties on tv are fake. I mean everything is factionalized and typically glamorized, but large parties are/were very much a real, normal thing. Large parties with alcohol are less common in high school but people find a way. A lot of the parties attended by high schoolers in tv/movies are thrown by college students/adults and the high schoolers are just attending.
We all need to get back to socializing.
Homecoming and prom are both yearly events. Homecoming is early in the school year. Prom is at the very end. Some schools will also have a winter formal just before Christmas break. I’ve never heard of a school that has more than 3 formal dances a year in the US.
Football parties, it depends on where in the US you’re thinking of. High school football is a big thing in more rural places. It was present but not a big thing where I grew up (coastal suburbs). From a film perspective, it’s a good way to get your characters all in one place so they can interact.
Prom happens once a year, usually nearer the end of the school year. It can get quite expensive, between the dress/tux, the corsage/buttionierre, and it’s usual to go out to dinner somewhere nice first. It’s a huge thing because it’s usually a teen’s first experience in a formal setting, and there are of course overtures of romance and friendship and the looming transition to adulthood. And from the film perspective, again get your characters dressed up and in the same place.
Those movies are as realistic as the movies on pornhub.
Yes
I’m pretty sure op is a bot
What’s a ‘football party’? 😬
But yah we had dances up the wazoo. 3/4 of them were informal so you could wear whatever and the other 1/4 were formal. We had dances probably once every month and a half.
It was a smaller town though so it was either the dances or teen pregnancy as a pastime. 🙃
48 comments
There’s generally 2-3 formal dances a year, one of them is prom.
Yep. Prom-posals (extravagant ways of asking “Will you go to prom/homecoming with me”) have taken over, too
Do you mean like the Super Bowl? Then yes, that is quite common. Prom is held once a year by the majority of high schools in America. It is from Britain though, they just stopped doing it.
HS football is usually a 10-12 game regular season in the fall, so 5-6 home games, typically on Friday nights.
Potential for a couple more games if you make the playoffs.
My school was too small to have a football team.
We did have prom though.
Football is one season. So that happens in the fall. Prom is once a year
Yep
There is a huge difference between “is this actually real?” (Yes) and “does this happen as often as shown in movies?” (No).
In a movie, the narrative will advance to interesting stuff – you don’t often see people going to the bathroom or watching a movie inside your movie.
Prom only happens once a year, homecoming (a week of football parties) only happens once a year, but the movies always take time to show these events.
By “football parties”, do you mean pep rallies like in Grease?
Yes we really do prom and have parties.
High school football parties is more of a rural area thing. That’s just because there is nothing else to do there except go cow tipping or snipe hunting.
What is a high school football party?
Prom is usually once a year. There is often 1 or 2 other dances throughout the year, but there’s only 1 prom.
Yes. This is a thing. Though the scale at which they are shown in movies is often overblown.
Yes we have big parties and proms. Mine was similar to many movies. Limo, NYC, drunken kid stuff. Fun old days.
Yes but exaggerated
Prom is once per year. Football parties happen more often with big fans, but most people only have one per year for the Super Bowl, if they are into sports at all.
Prom is once per school year, but there are other dances like homecoming and sometimes winter formal. Football games happen every weekend for the most part during the football season, never heard of football parties though.
There are generally two proms you go to in high school, junior prom and senior prom
Then there is homecoming, which is a high school thing, once every year, and all four years are involved. There will be a home coming king and a home coming queen. Usually just one, but some schools do a king and a queen for each year.
Homecoming can be a very big thing, especially in rural areas that take football seriously. Some towns have huge rivalry and will really go to great lengths over their teams. Football and basketball.
The beavers vs duck, which is college, was an example of this (i understand they are not longer in the same group any more but I am not a sports person so 😉)
So yes. Every year.
There is a parade for home coming too.
Prom kids will rent limos, and some hotel rooms for the night.
Massachusetts:
From what I read here crazy parties aren’t the norm anymore. When I was in high school in the 1980s, every weekend there were crazy parties with a couple hundred kids, literally (attempting) to swing from chandeliers, 7 rooms of parties, people hooking up in bedrooms, and usually eventually broken up by cops and people run off into the night.
Toga parties, SO much alcohol, drinking games, throwing out windows, people passed out all over. It was mayhem and bad decisions.
After prom we gathered gathered at parents/grandparents little lake cabins, off season.
As a genx , when I was a kid, house parties actually happened quite often, and not just for the things that you mentioned.
I graduated in 2000 so I can’t say what’s going on NOW, but ya when I was in school we very frequently had parties after football games. I was in the marching band so we were all together anyway. We would very frequently go to someone’s house afterwards as a big group. Often with players and cheerleaders too…the cliques like you saw on TV didn’t really exist.
Yes high school football exists and can be a big deal among the student body. In some locations (often smaller towns) the wider community takes an interest in the football team and attends the games in addition to students at the school.
The prom happens once a year, and there will often be a few other similar dances throughout the year that are a bit less fancy. At my high school the prom was only open to students in the oldest two years (plus their dates) while the other dances were open to all students. The specifics probably vary a bit throughout the country.
Yeah, had parties every home game I played football. And there was a homecoming dance and prom every year. So yes it’s real just not as often as seen in the movies
Fuck yeah, prom every Friday and Saturday night. Most weeknights too in summer.
My daughter just graduated from High School, I didn’t hear her mention a football party. There was a Homecoming Dance which is generally a big deal at a school, Prom, and a Winter Formal. With Prom and Homecoming she said that very few students actually stayed more than an hour and most went off to after-parties, and after-after parties.
Yes. Football season is fall. There is a homecoming parade before the game. A king and Queen are nominated. Then after the game is usually a homecoming dance (sometimes the night before or a week apart). High schools generally host one or two pep rallies during the school day.
At end of school year there is a junior and senior prom. They are usually at wedding type venues.
I lived in a mid sized Midwest town with 2 high schools. We had a football party at one of the players houses after EVERY game. Parents would bring TONS of food and the players and their girlfriends would just hang out. Usually outside around a big bonfire. Parents were always present so it wasn’t an alcohol fueled crazy thing.
We had two dances a year. Homecoming and prom.
football parties every week. it’s so bad that kids leave the games early to get over there and pre-drink.
i mean prom parties, yeah, but that’s only once a year.
“Homecoming” is the big one for football. That is usually a week, weekend, and/or day where a school hosts activities for past graduates/attendees. It’s a big reunion, typically. Or at least, that’s the stated goal. For some it really is, for some it’s just a big weekend. A football game is usually part of this unless the school doesn’t have a football team.
Football is almost exclusively an autumn/fall sport, at least for schools; and Homecoming is usually in October. This is usually accompanied by a part or dance at the school (or hosted by the school) as well as private events that students or families may organize. The dance may happen at a rented place like a hotel, ballroom, large church, etc. but it would still be organized by the school or people associated with the school like the parent-teacher association or the social-events student committee, or some other group/committee related to student life / events. These are not something the school will hire a random “party company” to organize, at least not in most places.
There are a few others, in the spring there is usually a more formal event. For most schools it is for just the oldest students, often only Seniors (sometimes with Juniors / grade 11 as well) with rules about how a senior might invite a younger student as their date, but those rules are often somewhat strict. A senior couldn’t invite the entire Freshman class or something. Prom is usually a *really* big deal for most students at most schools, though it’s not universal. My school was small enough that the spring formal was open to all students, with a more “party” type event just for seniors that happened separately.
I recall there being a basketball game for the mid-winter dance, but that was not a big event, not even a normal event. Just a random weekend for students to have fun – basketball team played a normally scheduled game Friday afternoon and school dance either afterward or on Saturday. etc.
Other parties or semi-formal events depend on the school and may or may not be related to milestones or sports that happen during the school year. To my mind those are the only two “universal” events that all schools would either host, or would host an equivalent. Some schools may do two or three per term, some schools only one or two all year, but even the busiest “party” school is not hosting anything like monthly school-wide parties.
Sometimes a sports team, the marching band, or a student club will host a party for their participants but these are separate from the school-wide parties. If the football team has a season-end party in December, that is separate from Homecoming in October and would be just for the football team and their dates.
These (school parties/formals) are also separate from school-wide community events. As an example of a community event, my school had a day where you get to school, go to the gymnasium, and we were broken off into groups. Then we went with our groups in cars or busses and did yardwork around the neighborhood (eg. clearing fallen branches, collecting trash, etc).
Yes. Prom is once a year in the spring. Football is all through the fall.
I’ve never been quite sure if high schoolers are nowhere near as unsupervised, promiscuous, and party-obsessed as they are on TV, or if I was just a loser. But my experience was definitely not remotely, like, *at all*, how high school is portrayed on almost any TV show. Gilmore Girls was pretty accurate, I guess.
Prom is a thing and kids often party before and after, but it’s just once a year and I think it’s only for seniors and their dates (honestly, I didn’t go, it felt absurd to me to actually *elect* to spend extra time in the high school social scene).
Homecoming is the first dance of the year and usually after the first football game. Prom is the last dance of the year and attended by people about to graduate (and possibly one of the younger students if they’re a guest)
Big football parties are more of a regional thing, more common in the South than the North and more common in Rural areas than Urban areas.
There are usually at least two dances a year at any high school, Homecoming in the Fall which is usually for all grades and is ‘dressy’ rather than ‘formal’ usually and Prom in the Spring or early Summer (right at the end of the school year) which is officially for Seniors and sometimes Juniors (12th and 11th grades, and some bigger schools have separate Junior and Senior prom) and is formal. Prom and Homecoming are pretty much universal.
High school football is a huge saturday night event at most schools around the US with cheerleaders and sometimes hundreds of people attending.
Prom night and other school dances (usually 3 a year) are pretty much as you see them in movies. Kids getting dressed up, dancing, sometimes hiring limos or taking dad’s expensive car out, upperclassmen usually have sleepover parties sometimes involving drinking alcohol.
Yes. High school football games on Friday night usually. You have big cries. Some small towns, adults come to see the game even if they dont have kids. It’s a big social event. Other sports font carry the crowds.
Senior prom is a big night for seniors near the end of their graduating year. These would be within 3 weeks or so from graduation.
When I was a kid before social media/ cell phones– fir nsny thus might hsve been the last social event you’d ever see your classmates for the rest of your life.
Before Facebook came around, I only saw ( excluding classmates who lived a few house from my home). I saw regularly 3 people from my graduating class. 2 of them i saw at
college and one class mate married a friend of mine. I saw a few others at random parties or events in that. Ig I had cell phones I probably would have kept in touch with others. Another friend married another classmate ( 2nd for both..both already had kids)
Absolutely yes. I grew up in the big city (Los Angeles) and football and dances were life.
Prom is an annual event.
My school was trash at football, but the games would have a vendor selling cheap pizza, and they were an excuse to hang out with your friends and maybe drink some booze that one of your friends stole from their parents. Sometimes a student band would play before the game and we’d dance.
High school football parities usually only happen after football games, which is 5-6 times during football season (August-November). Homecoming parties are usually after homecoming, which is in October or November.
Prom nights usually happen in April or May. My school had separate junior and senior proms.
So really that’s 8-9 nights out of nine months. So no, not that often
Proms happen every school year, and there are usually Homecoming parties, church dances, and in my hometown Sweet 16 parties and quinceneras were a big deal.
In my 70’s high school we had the fall dance the weekend of the Homecoming football game, with a rock band inside and lots of kids outside smoking weed and drinking, very informal. They played a bunch of fast rocking songs, then a slow one for slow dances, with plenty of pretty girls waiting for someone to ask them to dance, so that was pretty good. It gave you an idea where your chances were. We had a few of those dances every year at school, plus prom in the spring, but then the local Boys & Girls Club staying having dances every Friday night at their facility, which was pretty great.
where i’m from (Long Island, NY), there is only 1 dance per year, but it’s a different kind depending on age. younger kids might have a valentines day dance, a semi-formal dance, or a winter formal type event, usually around halfway through the school yeaf. high schoolers may have a junior prom for younger students, but not all schools do that. then there’s the almighty senior prom for the graduating seniors- basically the only universal event – which is usually reserved for the end of the school year.
idk about football parties. i never attended a single football game growing up and don’t intend to as an adult unless some future child of mine decides they love football (God help me XD). i genuinely detest the sport as a whole and the culture around it. it was not a necessary part of social life in my region and i don’t feel as though i missed out on anything.
It makes me so sad that so many people think house parties on tv are fake. I mean everything is factionalized and typically glamorized, but large parties are/were very much a real, normal thing. Large parties with alcohol are less common in high school but people find a way. A lot of the parties attended by high schoolers in tv/movies are thrown by college students/adults and the high schoolers are just attending.
We all need to get back to socializing.
Homecoming and prom are both yearly events. Homecoming is early in the school year. Prom is at the very end. Some schools will also have a winter formal just before Christmas break. I’ve never heard of a school that has more than 3 formal dances a year in the US.
Football parties, it depends on where in the US you’re thinking of. High school football is a big thing in more rural places. It was present but not a big thing where I grew up (coastal suburbs). From a film perspective, it’s a good way to get your characters all in one place so they can interact.
Prom happens once a year, usually nearer the end of the school year. It can get quite expensive, between the dress/tux, the corsage/buttionierre, and it’s usual to go out to dinner somewhere nice first. It’s a huge thing because it’s usually a teen’s first experience in a formal setting, and there are of course overtures of romance and friendship and the looming transition to adulthood. And from the film perspective, again get your characters dressed up and in the same place.
Those movies are as realistic as the movies on pornhub.
Yes
I’m pretty sure op is a bot
What’s a ‘football party’? 😬
But yah we had dances up the wazoo. 3/4 of them were informal so you could wear whatever and the other 1/4 were formal. We had dances probably once every month and a half.
It was a smaller town though so it was either the dances or teen pregnancy as a pastime. 🙃
I’m in Texas, fuck yeah we do